FirstTableCheck — every door into the food business
Every beginner in the food business walks through one of four doors — a home kitchen, a small space, a restaurant of their own, or buying a place that already exists. Each door has different rules, different permits and a different clock, and all of it changes by state. Answer two questions and we will point you at the right checker — then show you the whole road on one map.
The paid kit
The filled templates, label sheets, trackers, calendars and worksheets for every door, built from the same dated datasets as the free checkers.
Nobody in this business has one question. The woman selling cakes from home this year is asking about a café lease two years from now — and the rules she meets at each door were written by different offices, in different years, in her state's own words. FirstTableCheck is the first place that computes all of it from dated datasets: home-food laws in all 51 jurisdictions, the permit stack, the liquor clock, and what it will actually cost — then draws it as one timeline, your Opening Map.
No lease, no landlord — every state has a home-food law, and every one is different: what you can sell, how much, and whether you need a permit at all.
Permits in the right order, the certificates your team needs, and the one license that can eat a year: liquor. Computed for your state and your format.
Is the asking price real? Which permits transfer, and which die with the old owner? The two questions that save — or sink — a purchase.
Trucks run on their own permit system, and we built that whole checker already. Commissary rules, city permits, state requirements — it all lives at FoodTruckCleared.
Your state × your food × where you sell it → legal, legal-with-a-permit, or not-from-home — plus your sales cap and your label rules.
Every permit, in filing order, with the fees the state actually sets — and an honest flag where your county sets the number.
Open license, quota purchase, or the restaurant exception nobody tells beginners about — with your timeline and your rent burn while you wait.
Who on your team needs a food handler card, by when — and whether a certified manager must be in the building. State by state.
Not a blank spreadsheet: the regulated lines come from the same datasets as the checkers — including the dead rent during your liquor wait.
The value bracket on any listing, from the earnings the seller claims — and the permit-transfer question that decides the deal.
Guides online give you a checklist written for nobody. Enter your door, your state and your plan once, and the Opening Map draws every permit, certificate and license as ONE dated timeline — with the long pole marked in red, so you can see today what will actually decide your opening date.
Some of this is decided by your county or your city — a health permit fee, a zoning signature. Where that is true, our checkers say so and name the exact office, instead of printing a confident number we do not hold. Where the state decides, we compute it, cite it, and date it. That is the whole deal.
Included in the $49 Opening Pack: the filled templates, trackers, calendars and worksheets for this door — built from the same dated datasets as the free checker above.